WASHINGTON - A court-appointed monitor
disqualified Teamsters President Ron Carey from
a rerun election Monday, finding that Carey was involved
in an illegal scheme to funnel union funds into
his campaign coffers.

The decision was issued by former
federal judge Kenneth Conboy, acting as a special adjudicator
under the federal cleanup of the union. It was not immediately
clear whether Carey would appeal.

Conboy's decision leaves James P.
Hoffa on the ballot as union reformers scrambled to find a new
candidate.

Carey's re-election over challenger
James P. Hoffa last year was set aside Aug. 22 by a federal monitor
who found that an illegal fund-raising scheme may have contributed
to his slim margin of victory.

At the time, the officer, Barbara
Zack Quindel, found noreasonto disqualify Carey, who had run on
an anticorruption platform.

But Quindel's inquiry had just begun
when she recused herself, saying new testimony implicated
a business associate of one of her investigators.

U.S. District Court Judge David Edelstein
appointed Conboy, who serves as an appeals officer
in the Teamsters cleanup process, to complete the Carey investigation.
Conboy's inquiry began Sept. 29.

A federal grand jury investigation
into the affair is continuing, and the leaders of other
labor organizations and political groups could face charges.

The union's federally appointed Independent
Review Board, which has the power to expel
union officers, also is investigating.

In October, Carey sought to portray
himself as a leader far removed from the day-to-day operations
of the 1.4 million-member union and the campaign - and therefore
unaware of the conspiracy.

"I don't think any one man in
any organization ... can know everything, and I don't think
he's expected to," he told reporters.

Carey said he hired people he trusted
to run the campaign, yet he maintained that he
hardly had any contact with Nash or Davis.

"They designed a scheme certainly
to rip off this union - rip me off in terms of my credibility,"
Carey said. "You can't control people. People step over the
line. They abuse their authority."

Scandal is nothing new to the Teamsters,
the nation's largest private sector union. Three
international presidents, including Hoffa's father, James R. Hoffa,
were sent to prison. The Justice Department has alleged that several
were controlled by organized crime.

But Carey has been a hero to labor
reformers since winning the first rank-and-file election
for Teamsters president, which was held under the terms of a federal
consent decree the union signed in 1989 to avoid racketeering
charges.

Since taking office in 1992, Carey
has sold off the jets that used to ferry Teamsters leaders across
the country and placed in trusteeship some 75 locals that were
accused of corruption.

He also invested in organizing new
members, and he led 180,000 workers through a successful
15-day strike against United Parcel Service last
summer that ranked as one of labor's greatest victories in a decade.

But the union's finances have dwindled
during his administration and he failed to unite
the membership.

His opponents accused him of using
the cleanup process to neutralize his political enemies.

Carey beat Hoffa by less than 4 percentage
points in a mail-in ballot last December. About
one-third of all Teamsters voted in the contest, which cost the
federal government about $20 million.

A federal grand jury in New York is
investigating other alleged schemes run by Nash and Davis, as
well as the union's ties to the Democratic Party.